Love the Truest Blessing, or the Darkest Curse?
by Jezziznle
Summary: When a dark secret from Alice's past is exposed, Jasper believes the unthinkable- Alice still feels for the man who created her- a man she's never met. When the Volturi come knocking, and the Cullens are nowhere to be found, where will Alice turn? Post BD
1. Prologue

Love is a fickle object that few can ever truly observe and contain; I should know, after the things I've seen in the last few months. Was it really only half a year ago that I was home, watching shooting stars bleed across the sky with my family?

Sometimes life offers you distractions, often too tempting to resist- before you know it every door you've seen open suddenly closes, and everything becomes a darker place. A distraction, as I've learned, can be as deadly as a mouse trap; for me, I was a mere guinea pig, who could neither die instantly from the contraption nor break free of it. Trapped was a good word for it; I had no choices left but one other, and it only lead to exile and a life on the run. The family was better off left to their own workings, instead of constantly having to flee from the people who longed to use me, to destroy them.

One thing almost kept me from crossing over the lines to a dimmer future- almost. How could Jasper assume that one detail of my life that had finally come out of the shadows ruin everything we'd worked for? Did he honestly believed that this…this creep, Doyle, or whatever he called himself, meant more to me than he had, when Jasper had given me everything Doyle had taken? Was he really so selfish, as Chelsea claimed?

Leander watched me, bored, as if the only reason he was with _them_ was because there was nothing better to do- which was probably true, for him at least; only Jacque seemed to have the same distaste for this place as I did.

I would give my family the peace-of-mind they deserved, my last action to protect them. It was all I could give.

"On one condition Aro- you leave the Cullens alone, all of them."

His waxy skin seemed to gleam in anticipation; he nodded, then stretched his arms wide to accept his most unwilling new member of the Volterra coven.

**Starting a AxJ storyline, 10 reviews until I update next. r&r**


	2. Invisionary

A warm sensation, caught between the smell of warm honey and the comfort of heated silk blankets pulsated into the small airline cabin, gushing from Jasper's core beneath my palm. This glow of energy for which I had no name for was one of the strangest I knew Jasper to produce. His heart, over a century silenced, conjured the faintest illusion of its own lost heartbeat to a steady rhythm. Edward said it was because he was so impassioned by me, or so he'd claimed when he first encountered such an atmosphere. It was harder to feel this strong of an awareness coming from him when the air was diluted by other vampires whose emotions, rather than a humans, were comparable to a wrecking ball versus a marble. His own joyous radiance continued to pulsate through my hand through his own true medium- me.

It was inevitable that the emotional status of the other passengers would affect our moment of subtle craving to be alone together, despite the minor affect their weaker, petty feeling's affect had on my Jasper. So hard was it for us to be this attuned to one another that we could never manage it near the house- resulting in an annual vacation to Jasper's old home in Texas; a ranch that had belonged to every generation of his family after his change until in the 70's, when they sold it off to move to a bigger community. Little had we known Esme had bought it (well, I had known, but why ruin the surprise for Jasper?) and had given it to us for our wedding after her own brand of touching-up.

Somewhere below on the second-class aircraft floor a toddler giggled- no older than three or four years at oldest, when an invisible impact pressed me against the seat, and forced my eyes shut- symptoms of a vision; some part of my conscious mind was a little annoyed by the interruption, but the vision took over.

_Haunted, dawn in, dusk out, by my own personal hell- not something Edward could imagine when he probed my thoughts, not something Jasper could guess when he picked up on my emotional thrust into panic-mode. Wails of terror, begging reminded me of a video of the Jewish holocaust I'd been forced to watch in an 80's history class, before people began to think it was too graphic. My cell, hardly 4 by 7 foot, was pitch black, but I could still feel the drafts of cold air, the smell of charred hair from my 'treatments'. My mother…I later found out that she never hoped I would get better, that my visions would never stop; my grave was a silent memorial to that. It was obvious she never cared if I suffered the last of my days in a dark cell, shocked twice a week in the hopes I would lose my gift._

An echo of confusion rang in my ears- when ever did I have flashbacks of the past? I could only to my knowledge see what could happened, not what already passed. The vision sucked me back into full attention once again.

_The cell melted away, the presence of walls gone yet the light had not yet returned. Humidity immediately weighed my hair down, my breath a cloud in the suddenly warm tropical air. A river gurgled sluggishly by, nearly a mile in length, and thick trees swayed lightly in a non-existent breeze. _

_My vision directed me to where, across the river, two frightened children huddled besides a tree. One, a boy, was incredibly short and lean, his features long and narrow; the other, a girl, bared a shocking resemblance to…me? Had I had a brother in my past too?_

_Both eyes were dark black, empty- thirsty. A taller woman with familiar brown hair grimaced in my direction, and turned away from me._

_Lottie._

Lottie. Lottie. Why could I remember her now? Why, after decades of frantically wracking my brain for anything, _anything_ that I could remember from my past, did she appear so clearly, as if not a day had passed since my days as a loonie? L

Lottie…one of the workers at the asylum. She had been one of the few that cared for me so kindly after my treatments and exile in the cold cell. The question continued to pound against my head as if it would explode with the pressure.

_Why?_

"Alice?" Jasper's voice, well coated over to hide the tenor of worry, brought me back to what was happening. "It's time to leave."

**A/N: I didn't get my wish of 10 reviews, but I figured those who did review should get a special treat for their efforts. Is 5 reviews this time too much to ask for? Sorry for the chapter being so short.**


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